1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer system, a server, a printing method, a program and a recording medium, for controlling a printer connected through a communications network to print data.
2. Description of the Related Art
IT (Information Technology) has become common in various facilities and institutions. In this context, less paper is required.
Electronic data may somehow disappear by an obstacle occurring on a network. This usually happens because of the nature of the electronic data. Thus, important information (data) should be printed on paper, so that the important information can securely be retained.
The importance of the paper on which information is printed does not change even if a service of an ASP (Application Service Provider) is used. In other words, even if a service of the ASP is used, it does not mean that all the tasks are digitized. Hence, the printed papers are required in many cases.
Hence, even if the surroundings in work force are digitally processed, those papers on which data is printed are still necessary.
In fact, IPP (Internet Printing Protocol), based on which printers connected to the Internet print data, is standardized by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).
In the conventional client-server system, many application programs are installed in each of a plurality of client terminals, and each of the plurality of client terminals executes the application programs installed therein.
Hence, the response of the system depends on the performance of each client terminal and the bandwidth of a network (a communications circuit) for connecting the server and the plurality of client terminals. In other words, to effectively utilize services of the ASP, it is necessary to highly maintain the performance of each client terminal.
Since many of application programs are installed in each of the client terminals, each application program needs to be updated on each client terminal. Therefore, many tasks are required for installing, maintaining and managing the application programs. An enormous amount of money is required to configure and maintain the system.
In the case where data is output to a target printer (IPP printer) according to IPP, each client terminal needs to have a printer driver corresponding to the IPP printer.
Hence, in the case where there are a large number of IPP printers which can be target printers to be printing data, each client terminal needs to have a large number of printer drivers respectively corresponding to the IPP printers. Each client terminal needs to include a storage device having sufficiently large storage capacity for storing the large number of printer drivers. Thus, inexpensive computers or somehow-old-type computers can not be used as client terminals in the conventional system.
In the case where the model of the IPP printer is changed, a new printer driver corresponding to the IPP printer needs to be installed in each client terminal.
In such circumstances, a great number of tasks and a large amount of money are required for establishing the environment necessary for using the IPP printer(s). In addition, expensive client terminals are needed in the conventional printer system.